I shall come into your dream
As a black ewe, approach the throne
On withered and infirm
Legs, bleating: «Padishah,
Have you dined well? You who hold
The world like a bead, beloved
of Allah, was my little son
To your taste, was he fat enough»
Я приснюсь тебе черной овцою
На нетвердых, сухих ногах,
Подойду, заблею, завою:
"Сладко ль ужинал, падишах?
Ты вселенную держишь, как бусу,
Светлой волей Аллаха храним...
Так пришелся ль сынок мой по вкусу
И тебе, и деткам твоим?"
«My talent is pitiful, my voice not loud, / but I am living; somewhere in the world / someone looks kindly on my life; far off / a distant fellow-man will read my words / and find my being; and, who knows, my soul / will raise an echo in his soul, and I / who found a friend in my own time...»
«This is how hunger begins: / first you wake in good cheer, / then weakness begins, / and then boredom, / and then comes the losss / of the power of swift reason / and then comes calm — / and then the horror.»
«Here’s the rain crashing down, / time has stopped. / The clocks go on helplessly knocking. / Grow, grass, you don’t need time. / Speak, Holy Spirit, you don’t need words.»
«Nowhere anything for eating, / all of Russia fading, freezing, / selling gramophones and blankets, / hats and chairs and anything / in exchange for wheat and millet / in the year nineteen-nineteen. Elder brother killed already, / and my dad already blind, / all our furniture long bart...»